Our democracy was more strongly rooted than the Cabinet 'security axis' believed, argues Justin Keating.
I very nearly didn't give evidence (if that is the right word) to the Oireachtas committee which, subsequent to the Barron report, had a further look at the Dublin and Monaghan bombings of May 1974, in which 33 people were killed.
I am glad now that I did go, because the committee, whether it was listening to me or not, reached conclusions on those events very similar to my own.
But in some ways it was an unsatisfactory experience. I did not have parliamentary privilege, and the standing orders are so tight that I could not say what I wanted. So I'm saying it now.
The committee agrees with what I had written originally in The Irish Times just after Christmas, that there was an "exceptionally high" probability of collusion between the paramilitaries who committed this atrocity and some portion of British security forces in Northern Ireland, and that an inquiry was needed into the winding down of the Garda investigation.
It appears that the committee accepts Mr Justice Barron's conclusion that the Garda investigation was wound down. To me the great question is: why?
In the Barron report conclusions (p276) there is the blunt statement that the government of the day showed little interest in the bombings.
I think this needs to be amplified.
First, the "security axis" of the government consisted of the taoiseach, Liam Cosgrave, the ministers for defence, environment and posts and telegraphs, repectively Paddy Donegan, James Tully and Conor Cruise O'Brien.
Garret FitzGerald says, rather ruefully I think, in his book, All In A Life, that he was a member of the security committee "when matters of external concern arose", which I find curious. I think he was somewhat marginalised in these matters by the group listed above.
Very few of all the consequences arising from the bombs came before the whole government.
The members of the "security axis" were neither inexperienced nor stupid. I don't think they showed "little interest"; I think they reached a decision to play the whole matter down.
Again the question must arise, if my supposition is true, as to why. My recollection is that we were unduly influenced in many of our decisions about Northern Ireland by what I think of as the Doomsday Scenario. Or, as Henny Penny, said: "The sky is falling".
Of course, events were desperately serious. The danger that the country would become ungovernable was real. We lived in the shadow of the Arms Trial. The possibility of further crazy provocations against Northern Ireland was real, but in my view, then and now, exaggerated. The sky was always falling. I think the main source of this was Dr Cruise O'Brien, who I think is a bit fond of doomsday scenarios.
Two things reassured me that we were not on the brink of the abyss. First, 50 years previously the men of no property had been real rebels and revolutionaries. But in the intervening half-century they had become men of considerable property. Though they were wont, after dark and with a few pints in their bellies, to hint about the pike in the thatch, in the end they loved their ducats more than their fourth green field.
So consider the other possibility. The government and the Garda pursue the investigation with the utmost vigour. The perpetrators are known. Their extradition is sought for trial here. Whether this is refused or not, so much evidence of British collusion becomes public that outrage makes the country ungovernable.
I never believed it. I was, like everyone else, aware of the very deep divisions within Fianna Fáil. I think that in a crisis George Colley would have supported our coalition government against the hard men (Blaney, Boland) of his own party.
And I am strengthened in my trust for our basic calm and good sense by the response, later, of the Irish people to the sabotaging by the Thatcher government of the efforts to save Bobby Sands and others from death. This extraordinarily stupid and counterproductive action was the greatest recruiting aid that Sinn Féin/IRA ever had.
If we were going to tumble into the abyss of ungovernability, it was then. We did not.
So our government had an arguable, though mistaken, rationale for playing things down. But I still think we were wrong, and it's a pity.
As for the demand that the Taoiseach bring the search for truth to Downing Street, if Tony Blair responded with a whole heart, in my belief he would end up proving that Britain is a state which concealed its own state terrorism. In the middle of his "war against terror" I think this outcome a mite unlikely.
Justin Keating was Labour minister for industry and commerce in the FG-Labour coalition government in 1974